Crab party bites

With a small amount of fresh crab left over, we wondered what we could make and came up with these easy, very tasty party bites. At around 20 calories (if that) per portion, your guests will enjoy the light crunch against the sweet crab. Not only that, but they are very cost effective to make.

You can find dressed crab at the supermarket for around £4 or £5. If using this, you’ll probably end up with between 20-30 crab party bites – a little goes a long way. Even these could be halved again for the perfect one bite. They look very impressive, and the French toast is easy to make too, here's how:

FRESH CRAB

How lucky we were to find some very delicious fresh crab – just landed (…. on our plate) while we were away.  

This fresh crab sandwich is light in calories yet packed with a wonderful sweetness. The brown crabmeat is much more powerful, so we added a touch of lemon juice and mayonnaise.  You could also chop hard-boiled egg into the mixture. We used the brown crab mix to spread on the rolls instead of using butter, before piling the white crab meat on top.  

White crab meat has approximately 72 calories per 100g, and we estimate our large crab roll totalled around 350 calories.
Do you know how many calories you are allowed each day?

Here's a link to our very first blog post about our weight loss journey, which we began in January 2011. We started this blog as a way of recording what we ate while losing weight. The blog is a food diary, and contains lots of recipes, tips and ideas about losing weight.

You'll find our WEIGHT LOSS PLAN here. 

Copyright © forget dieting forever (2014), all rights reserved. Please do not copy any of this material without my express permission.

Monday crab and scallops

Here's a delightful salad - colourful and tasty. Mix together white and brown crab meat, add some flash fried scallops and plonk on a bed of salad. Season with olive oil, salt and pepper and you have a fab salad. Add a side of new potatoes with some butter, and our evening meal come in at around 500 calories.

All that nourishment and there's still room for dessert - now that's a good day!

400 cals for crab and scallops with ginger and lime

At around 400 calories this dish is fantastic.  Easy to make, and with the addition of Jersey royal potatoes, absolutely heavenly.  Plenty of calories left for our take on crepe suzette - see recipe.

This dish looks quite spectacular - yet it is so easy to do.  Honestly, as long as you can boil potatoes and carrots, there is very little else to it.  

Ingredients for two people

400g new potatoes

200g mixed crab meat

200g scallops without the roe

small bag of watercress

one shallot

clove of garlic

small amount of veg/chicken stock to cook the carrots in

2 carrots

small piece of ginger (about an inch) - grated

1/2 teaspoon of lime plus a little zest

oil 

butter - use a little when crushing the potatoes

We prepared the carrot puree in the afternoon.  Gently fry the shallot and garlic to soften, then put into a saucepan with the carrots and stock (or just use water).  Cook the carrots until soft then liquidize, adding a little salt and pepper to taste.  Next, add the finely grated ginger and the 1/2 teaspoon of lime juice, plus a bit of the zest.  This just needs warming back through, when ready to serve.

Cook the potatoes until soft.  Crush then stir in the crab meat.  We added just a little butter to the potatoes, and I suppose that's why there are so few calories in this dish - a restaurant may add much more (especially in the carrot puree).  Cook the scallops on a high heat.  Use a little oil and butter in the pan, and fry quickly until done.  Our scallops are quite small and we reckon about 1 minute each side.  The worst thing you can do is overcook them.  

This time we decided to make a watercress puree, mainly for colour but also to see how the flavours went together.  We used half the bag of watercress and simply whizzed this up with a little olive oil, salt and pepper with a dash of lemon juice.

Plate up and enjoy!!  We had a good glass of Macon Village with ours... brilliant.

The cost of this dish (for two) was around £10, with the main ingredients being:  dressed crab £3.75 (around 200g of brown & white meat), scallops £4.20 (for around 200g), jersey royals £1.80 (400g).

Copyright © (c)forgetdietingforever 2012, all rights reserved.